It’s no secret that the wingnut fringe skipped and danced when Jeff Sessions squeaked through the Senate to become attorney general. But it looks like there was at least one reason why some right-wingers were excited at Sessions becoming the nation’s top cop that we didn’t know about. Apparently they think a Sessions Justice Department will launch a badly-needed investigation into–wait for it–Pizzagate. Yep, that’s right. They’re actually hoping that Sessions will spend his time chasing down fake news.
Just hours before Sessions was confirmed, religious right activist Dave Daubenmire made a bold prediction on his daily Webcast–it wouldn’t be long before we finally get to the bottom of the supposed sex trafficking ring operated by Hillary Clinton and a number of other Democratic bigshots at the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor in Washington. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
About 25 minutes into his show, Daubenmire breathlessly predicted that “all hell is going to break loose” once Sessions is confirmed, in part because Pizzagate is about to blow wide open. He claimed that there’s a reason why James Comey is still FBI director–“Comey knows where all the bodies are buried” on Pizzagate, and has been helming “a behind-the-scenes investigation” into the matter. Daubenmire claimed that Sessions “has already been briefed” on the investigation.
Daubenmire argued that it was no coincidence that the Senate Republicans needed Sessions’ vote to help confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary. He claimed that one way “Luciferians” try to “steal the seed of God away from him” was by way of “mental molestation” of kids in public schools–and DeVos’ confirmation spells the beginning of the end of that campaign. With that minor detail cleared up, Daubenmire believed the “demonic deviants” responsible for Pizzagate better be very afraid.
“Here come da judge! Here come da judge! Sessions is gonna come in, and he is now going to try to clean up this mess. And there are reports on the Internet–believe them if you want to or not–that we’re talking about Senators, congressmen, public officials, news reporters who are going to be caught in this web of pedophilia. Because, understand this, people in power do everything they can to get dirt on people so they can control them.”
Well, there is an FBI investigation underway, all right. But it’s not focusing on this supposed pedophile ring, whose existence has been debunked several times over–including by right-wing media outlets like The Washington Times and Fox News Channel. It’s focusing on a frightening scene that took place in December, when Edgar Welch traveled from his North Carolina home to “self-investigate” Comet Ping Pong. He fired three shots into the restaurant from an AR-15 style rifle. The FBI’s criminal complaint noted that Welch watched a video produced by conspiracy theory peddler and Trump BFF Alex Jones. Apparently Jones was scared enough to scrub a large chunk of Pizzagate-related material from his Website and his social media presence.
Beyond that, what “evidence” supposedly exists comes mostly from fake news sites, many of which continued pushing this nonsense after the shooting. All any “investigation” of this nonsense would accomplish would be to line the pockets of these bottom-feeders. For instance, Stefanie MacWilliams, whose since-deleted story at fake news site Planet Free Will helped make this conspiracy theory go viral, openly admitted that she didn’t care that it almost got people killed. All that mattered to her was that “it’s honestly really grown our audience.”
It’s hard to imagine Trump could have possibly made a worse pick for attorney general than Sessions. But we’d like to think not even he would be incompetent enough to waste taxpayer money chasing down fake news and conspiracy theory claptrap. Then again, we can’t rule anything out with anyone appointed by Trump. In the event that Sessions does decide to investigate this nonsense, perhaps he, Daubenmire, and the rest of the fringe should do us a favor and pay the bill themselves.
(featured image courtesy Office of the President-Elect, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
